Valentines day is just around the corner and here’s a cute and romantic idea that won’t take up a huge amount of your time either making or baking, thereby leaving loads of time for more romantic pursuits.

These Love Letter pastries are made from a sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry, but you can make your own if you prefer. An all-butter sheet will have a great flavour, but other fat/flour combinations can also be surprisingly tasty.

One sheet will make six of these pastries, but since the inside of the roll tends to get a bit squished, I mae just four, and use the offcut for decorations.

The best thing about these pastries is that they are baked without filling, but with a small ball of lightly-crumpled baking parchment inside, to form a pocket for whatever you care to use. As you can see in the photo, I’ve chosen one sweet and one savoury, cold fillings contrasting delightfully with the warm, crisp pastry, but anything goes.

Love Letter Pastries

Cut four (then you can use the best two) squares of pastry from the sheet.

For each Love Letter Pastry:

Scrunch up some baking parchment and place it in the middle of the square of pastry.

a, b & c Damp the edges of the pastry and fold the left, bottom and right corners inward, overlapping slightly. Press to seal. Adjust the piece of parchment if necessary so that it can be removed easily.

Prick the remaining exposed pastry to prevent it puffing up too much during baking.

Cut a heart out of the spare pastry and lay it on the place where the corners meet as a ‘seal’.

Place the pastries on a baking sheet lined with parchment.

Heat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.

When the oven is at temperature, whisk the egg and glaze the pastry.

Bake for 18-20 minutes, turning the baking sheet around after 10 minutes to ensure even colouring.

Cool on a wire rack.

When cooled, gently remove the parchment and discard. I’ve found the most effective method is to use the handle of a teaspoon to separate the cooked pastry from the parchment first, before trying to pull it out.

Fill generously and serve to your loved one.

Make ahead

You can bake these the day before, and store in an airtight container. To warm, place on a baking sheet and put into a cold oven. Turn the heat to 150°C, 130°C Fan for 10 minutes.

Bit of a bumper-fun bonus this week, with not one, not two, not three but FOUR recipes, each named Paradise Slice. Initially I was just going to make a post with two contratic recipes, but I got a bit carried away.

It all started with me reading a recipe in a small, vintage paperback pamphlet from the S.W.R.I. of Shapinsay, in Orkney. Their Paradise Slice comprised a rich, almond sponge, studded with dried fruits, candied cherries and baked in a shortcrust pastry case. Lovely, I thought. Baked it, and decided it needed tweaking a little, so made it again, this time with my crisp, cornflour shortcrust, which makes for a delicious contrast with the rich, buttery almond sponge, and also swapped in some confit fruit I’d bought on holiday in France.

Then I discovered a much-requested Paradise Slice in the Los Angeles Times, which was very different indeed: dark, rich, chewy and studded with pecans. Lovely, I thought – right up until I read how many calories it had per serving. So I did some tweaking and also reduced the batch size, making a slice now only 200 calories as opposed to, originally, over 500.

Then it occurred to me that I shouldn’t forget people with gluten intolerances. So I adapted a recipe from Sainsbury’s magazine that used as its base a mixture of popcorn and rice cereal. With a few more tweaks I managed to get each slice of this particular paradise down to less than 100 calories. Lovely, I thought.

Finally, being inspired by all these delicious contrasting bakes, I decided to create my own Paradise Slice. I wanted it to have similar tropical ingredients, but be a different texture and flavour experience. I took the topping from the Hungarian Cheesecake and added lime and orange zest and juice, because the acid in the citrus juice reacts with the condensed milk to make a cheesecake-like mixture without all the faff. I mixed in some crushed pineapple and desiccated coconut and also stirred through a little creme fraiche for sharpness. I poured this onto the base from the L.A.Times recipe and left it to set in a cooling oven before chilling in the fridge. The result is fantastically tropical, fresh-tasting and not overly sweet. It cuts beautifully, as the coconut takes up excess moisture as it sets in the oven, and can be enjoyed as a dessert or as an accompaniment to coffee. Best of all, it too is a storecupboard recipe, especially if, like me, you have a bag of Seville orange zest/juice cubes in the freezer (I cannot recommend this highly enough, so useful to have their tangy, bitter/sharp flavour on hand throughout the year).

Bloody lovely, I thought!

Shapinsay Paradise Slice – Makes 16 slices

The original recipe called for sultanas, raisins and glace cherries in equal measure. Nowadays we have a much wider selection of preserved fruit, so I heartily encourage you to go wild with whatever combination you fancy – mango, papaya, apricots, candied peel – whatever seems like paradise!

Line a baking tray with parchment. I used one of dimensions 20cm x 28cm, but anything roughly that size is fine.

Put the base ingredients into a food processor and blend until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Muscovado sugar can be a bit clumpy and this is a speedy and efficient way to break down the lumps.

Spread the mixture into the prepared tin. Pack it down firmly – use a flat-bottomed glass tumbler or similar to get a really smooth, firm surface.

Bake the base for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned. Set aside to cool.

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt.

Whisk the sugar, eggs and vanilla until creamy (about 5 minutes).

Stir in the flour mixture, the coconut and the pecans.

Pour this mixture over the base and smooth over.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until set.

Cool in the tin.

When cold, cut into 16 bars,.

Store in an airtight container.

Popcorn Paradise Slice – makes 32 gluten-free slices

This paradise slice is a variation on the rice krispie bar but with the added flavour of popcorn. I’ve decided to use air-popped popcorn, to reduce both the sugar and fat content. Air-popped corn uses no fat in the pan, just the heat from the stove to make the corn pop. I also tweaked the original recipe to include more fruit. The quantities below are to be seen as guidelines only – use whatever mix of fruit and nuts takes your fancy, just keep to the overall weight of fruit/nuts to no more than 250g.

Put the pan over medium heat and shake it vigorously to keep the kernels from burning before they pop.

When all the popping sounds have ceased, tip the popped corn into a bowl to cool. Wipe the pan with a clean cloth.

Pick out any un-popped kernels.

When cool, add in the rice cereal, fruit and nuts and mix thoroughly.

Line a large baking tray (24cm x 36cm-ish) with foil and grease lightly with either spray or butter.

Put the marshmallows and butter into the pan and heat gently until both have melted. Stir thoroughly.

Add the dry ingredients to the pan and stir well, ensuring as even a coating as possible for all of the ingredients.

Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and press down firmly. If you prefer to use your hands, cover the mix with some greased cling film first.

Chill in the fridge until completely cold, then cut into 32 fingers.

Store in an airtight container.

Coconut Pineapple Paradise Slice – makes 16 slices

This is possibly the easiest, in terms of effort, of all four recipes, as it is mostly just letting the oven or the fridge do all the work.

It is another of my Lego™ recipes – stick a bit of recipe A onto recipe B, add a little something-something and, as Jeff Goldblum would say…

You can use any two citrus fruits you like, but I don’t recommend two of the same, as then they tend to gang up on the other ingredients and overpower them. And definitely not two Seville oranges – the bitter is too much for the pineapple. I’ve also tried this with fresh pineapple for an even fresher taste, but the juice content didn’t allow it to set as firmly as I’d have liked. Were I to try this again, I’d sprinkle the chopped pineapple with sugar to help draw out as much moisture as possible.

Open the tin of pineapple and tip it into a sieve over a bowl. Leave to drain for about an hour – you want as much of the juice to drain out as possible.

Mix the condensed milk, creme fraiche and citrus together and stir thoroughly.

With a spatula, press the pineapple firmly to extract as much juice as possible. Yes, even after an hour’s draining. Repeat several times as necessary. When no more juice can be squeezed from it, add it to the condensed milk mixture and mix well.

Finally, stir in the coconut and set aside until required.

Line a baking tray with parchment. I used one of dimensions 20cm x 28cm, but anything roughly that size is fine.

Put the base ingredients into a food processor and blend until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Muscovado sugar can be a bit clumpy and this is a speedy and efficient way to break down the lumps.

Spread the mixture into the prepared tin. Pack it down firmly – use a flat-bottomed glass tumbler or similar to get a really smooth, firm surface.

Bake the base for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned.

Pour the filling over the cooked base and smooth over.

Return the tin to the oven and switch off the heat.

Leave the tray in the now cooling oven for two hours, then remove and leave to cool, if necessary.

Or you could make these pastry hearts, using a recipe you already know and love, and a filling you know s/he loves. They are neither complicated nor elaborate, but last time I checked, stress in the kitchen was not an aphrodisiac.

The pastry is a regular sweet shortcrust, with a little food colouring added to the iced water used to mix it together – a shade a little lighter than red wine in the water makes for this lovely pastel pink once mixed. If inclined, you could even make 2 or 3 batches, each of a different shade of red/pink for an eye-catching jumble of hearts.

I chose a filling of vanilla pastry cream, made with real vanilla bean and firmed up with a little gelatin for ease of piping. If your loved one has a favourite sandwich filling then go with that – Nutella, peanut butter, banana, Banoffi-pie caramel, slices of apple, all of the above….

Don’t limit it to sweet flavours. If your Valentine has a savoury tooth, fill his/her hearts with sausage, cheese, omelette, bacon, all of the above…

Pastry Hearts

Divide the chilled pastry in half. Roll out each half thinly (2-3mm) and cut into twice as many squares as you require of around 10cm in size.

Turn half of the squares so that one corner is pointing toward you and pipe/arrange your filling in heart shapes onto the pastry. Be sure to pile up the filling quite well, in order to give substance to your ‘hearts’.

Using a pastry brush and water, dampen the edges of the pastry around the filling.

Lay a second piece of pastry over the top and smooth it down and around your filling, making sure its fully enclosed. Try to make sure there’s no air trapped inside, as this may cause your pastry to burst during cooking.

Using a sharp knife, trim the excess pastry, leaving a border of 1cm around each heart.

Transfer the pastry hearts to a baking sheet lined with parchment. I didn’t poke holes in the pastry, but I did get a bit of the filling oozing out on one or two. To avoid this, you could poke some vent holes in the tops in a decorative pattern.

Chill in the fridge while the oven heats up.

Heat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.

Add a glaze if liked – milk and caster sugar for sweet, egg-white for savoury. I did experiment with both of these, but decided the unglazed puffs were more visually striking.

The recipe this week, as with most of my late-summer posts, is inspired by holidays in France. In addition to the usual holiday activities, this year we also enjoyed WiFi where we were staying, and I was able to binge-watch many episodes of the French version of Britain’s Best Bakery.

In true Bake Off style, each bakery is graded across three rounds: initial visit and tastings, specialist round, and group challenge – where the 3 (later dropped to just 2) bakeries in the region make a recipe set by the judges.

The most recent series has emphasized bread for the second round, so the bakeries must present their best-seller or their most favourite of their bread range, but in earlier seasons, there was no such stipulation, and bakeries could put forward whichever of their products they liked.

One of the bakeries in the Aquitaine Nord region put forward these pastries which really caught my eye as being both simple yet flavoursome. The contrast between the crisp pastry and the soft, moist filling, together with the obvious enjoyment of the two judges, struck me as so delicious and so unusual, I decided to try them myself. Helpfully, the programs also show the bakeries making these recipes, although omitting for the most part any details such as weights, oven timings and even the full list of ingredients. Nevertheless, I managed to piece together this recipe and here we are.

Jesuits get their name from their triangular form, resembling the headgear worn by Jesuit priests in the 17th century. There doesn’t seem to be any further link to the priesthood at all, so we can move swiftly on to their structure. A orange-flavoured almond sponge, or frangipane, is baked between two sheets of puff pastry. Once cooked and cooled, the pastry is cut into triangles and coated with Italian meringue, and briefly returned to the oven to bake until lightly tinted brown.

Apart from being delicious, these are incredibly simple to make. Like the bakery in the program, I initially made a large ‘tray bake’ and then cut it into triangles, but you could also make individual-sized portions. The frangipane is easily customised to any flavouring you like, and the meringue coating is not compulsory – you can just spread a layer on top if you prefer (it’d be a lot less sticky to do, too). Several versions ‘out there’ have only a simple water glaze if meringue isn’t a favourite. You could even omit it altogether: the simple, crisp, unadorned, butter pastry is a great contrast to the soft, moist, orangey, almond filling. If you think that this version sounds more your thing, I recommend making individual pastries – any shape, although I find (Mille-feuille/custard slice sized) rectangles both easy and most appealing.

The classic topping is almonds, flaked or chopped, but for the large bake, I was out of both and so opted for nibbed sugar, which added both sparkle and crunch. The plain pastries can be adorned with a brush of syrup and some flaked almonds for the last 10 minutes of baking and then finished off with a dusting of icing sugar, or indeed nothing at all.

Variation: Ground hazelnuts, if you can find them, make a fantastic pairing with candied orange.

Obviously, you could hand-make your puff pastry, using only the very best ingredients and taking two days to do so, but for speed, practicality, and the unknown quality of a new recipe, a roll of ready-made is the sensible choice. Splash out on an all-butter version. Go wild.

Jesuits

To finish – all are optionalItalian Meringue
sugar syrup – I used the syrup from the candied orange peel.
flaked or chopped almonds for sprinkling
icing sugar to dust

Preheat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.

Dock the pastry sheets with a pastry docker or use the tines of a fork to poke holes all over.

Whisk the butter until light and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat again until the mixture is pale and light.

Add the eggs, one by one, ensuring the first is thoroughly incorporated before adding the second.

When the eggs are incorporated, fold in the almonds, orange peel and zest, and liqueur if using.

Transfer the mixture to a piping bag fitted with 1 plain, 2cm tip.

Lay one of the pastry sheets onto a baking sheet on a piece of parchment.

Pipe the mixture evenly onto the pastry in a rectangle, leaving a border of at least 3cm around the edges.

Brush the edges with water and lay the second sheet of pastry over the filling. Press the edges firmly, trying to trap as little air as possible.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and golden. NB For individual pastries, you need bake for only 30 minutes, brushing with syrup and sprinkling them with flaked almonds for the last 10 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack.

When just warm, cut off the excess pastry from around the edges and then divide the filled pastry into triangles. The size is entirely up to you. You can either enjoy them as is, or add the meringue and almond coating.

After six years I decided to revisit the Apple Rose Tarts I created for Season 2 of The Great British Bake Off.

These are essentially the same tarts, but with a bit of a make-over for the apple decoration. Looking less like roses, but still with a floral semblance, these variations are formed from a swirl of poached apple slices on top of a set apple compote.

You can, of course, use the filling from the originals, but this simplified variation means that these tarts can be prepped in advance, and then assembled just before serving, something that was possible, but rather tricky, with the rose tarts.

I also experimented with using puff pastry. The above shells were created by draping puff pastry over the back of a star-shaped tart tin. The shell on the left was made from pastry cut with a six-petalled cutter. The form on the right was made using a large circular piece of pastry. In order to ensure they kept their shapes, a second tin ‘sandwiched’ the pastry inside, and a wire rack place on top to hold them in place. They were baked at 220°C, 200°C Fan for 15 minutes.

Use the pastry to line and fully bake whichever tartlet shells you prefer.

Allow to cool on a wire rack.

When cooled, if not using immediately, store in an airtight container until required.

Peel, core and chop the Bramley apples.

Put them in a saucepan with the water and lemon juice. Cover and simmer over medium low heat until they become fluffy.

Stir briskly to remove any lumps, then add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

Continue to simmer until the mixture has thickened. Set aside.

Prepare the dessert apples. If you have a mandolin that can cut 2mm slices, core the apples and slice them with that. You will need to cut these slices in half before using them. Otherwise, cut the apples in half from top to bottom, remove the core and cut into exceedingly thin, semicircular slices, 2mm if possible.

Pour the apple juice into a saucepan and submerge the apple slices as you cut them , to prevent discolouration.

Simmer the apple slices gently for 10 minutes or until tender – You need the apples to be soft enough so that you can roll them, but not so soft as to fall apart.

Lift the apple slices from the syrup with a slotted spoon and allow to drain/cool in a sieve.

When cool enough to handle, lay out the apple slices as follows.

The slices should be laid exceedingly close together, so there is only about 3mm of each slice visible.

The overall length of the strip of apple slices needs to be at least 15cm in order to be curled round into a form that will sit inside a single, cupcake-sized pastry shell.

Cover the strips of apple slices until required.

Add the sugar to the apple juice and stir until dissolved.

Simmer over medium heat, until the juice has thickened into a syrup.

Add a little red gel food colouring to tint the syrup, if liked.

To assemble the tarts:

Warm the apple compote and spoon 1-2 tablespoons into each pastry case. Allow to cool. As it cools, it will firm up and give support to the apple decoration.

For each strip of apple slices:

Lift the strip from the board and stand it on the flat base of the slices.

Curl one end of the strip around in a circle until it meets the other end of the strip.

Check whether the form is small enough to fit into the pastry shell. If not, ease the slices round into a tighter circle.

Place the curled slices into the pastry shell. Keep a hold of the form with one hand until you’re sure it has all fitted inside. A cocktail stick is handy here for tucking in the ends of any sticking-out slices.

When everything is tucked inside, you can stop holding the form, as the pastry case will support it.

Use the cocktail stick, if necessary, to tweak the apple slices into place. I particularly like the subtle variations in the finished patterns, depending on the number and curl of the apple slices – see below.

Brush the apple slices generously with the apple syrup, and serve.

In case you missed it:

There’s a concept in aesthetics called The Uncanny Valley, where a person’s affinity for human replicas increases up to a point, then demonstrates a sharp drop as the lifeless lifelikeness becomes unsettling.

Eddie Izzard has a similar concept in his Circle of Cool: if you’re not careful you can end up circling too far round and you start looking like a d*ckhead.

I have my own version regarding food. I haven’t got a name for it yet, but I know it when I see it. In Izzard terms, you have average looking food, nice looking food, tempting looking food, aaaaaaand then we tip over into offputting: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3.

“Oh but what if I just make the base out of crushed digestives, or, no, hang on, chocolate digestives!? Mixed with sugar. And butter, of course. And then make it sweetened whipped cream on the top, or maybe replace it altogether with a layer of chocolate ganache, with a little drizzle of chocolate sauce, and a bit of caramel sauce as well, and then sprinkle some…”

So yes. You don’t need to throw a hundred things at a dish to make it taste nice. Sometimes less really is more.

Which brings me on to this week’s post. Puff Pastry. Aaaaand that’s pretty much it. A bit of sugar, but basically it’s just a celebration of the simple pleasure of puff pastry: the crispness, the flakiness, the buttery crunch. You don’t need a lot else. The classic French patisserie item of Palmiers is precisely this, and they have retained their popularity for decades. I’ve decided to look at what you can do with a batch of puff pastry. And by batch I mean a roll of pre-rolled puff pastry from the supermarket.

*gasps and clutches pearls* You know you were going to do it – I thought I’d get in there first.

Make it yourself by all means. Have at it. Fill your boots. Me? I’m too busy and life is too short. Oh, I’ve made puff pastry myself in the past, and no doubt will make it again in the future, but there are no medals going for three days work – yes, three days, because if you were going to make it from scratch you’d want to make it properly, wouldn’t you? And I can’t be doing with ingredient snobbery. You’ll find no organic/free-range/grass-fed commandments on this blog – that choice is between you, your bank balance and your family. It’s none of my business and I wouldn’t dream of preaching. All the pastries you’re going to see in this post were made with supermarket puff pastry. And not even the all-butter one! And yes they are delicious.

So, ranting aside, with a little imagination, you can celebrate the glorious layering of puff pastry in a number of ways by baking it in shapes that take advantage of the way it transforms in the oven. Each of the following can be enjoyed as is, in the manner of palmiers, but you can also add just a couple of ingredients to dress them up: fresh fruit, whipped cream, icing sugar, ice-cream.

The designs that lie flat (toasts, fans) have slight differences between each side and can be used with the reverse side showing if a level surface is required. The shapes involving twists in the pastry are best displayed as cooked.

These are fairly straightforward to make, involving only a little manipulation once on the baking sheet in order to arrange the ‘petals’. They can be made any size you wish, however the smaller they are, the more fiddley they are to handle.

Also, a word of caution, be sure you cut them the correct way, because if you make a mistake with your initial cut, and cut the wrong edge, the petals fail to be formed and it ruins the entire batch. So, no pressure.

You will need:
1 roll of puff pastry – chilled
caster sugar

Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Preheat the oven to 220°C, 200°C Fan.

Sprinkle the work surface with caster sugar.

Unroll the puff pastry and lay it onto the sugar.

Sprinkle more caster sugar over the pastry.

Use a rolling pin over the pastry to press the sugar into both sides.

You can make the flowers any size. I suggest starting with pastry that is 20cm wide.

Fold the pastry in half lengthways (to determine the middle) then fold each long side into the centre.

Fold the pastry in half widthways (to determine the middle) then fold each short side into the centre.

Fold the short sides into the middle again, to close the pastry up like a book.

With the folded pastry facing you like a book, with the rounded side to the left and the side with two folds to the right, cut of the right-hand edges and discard.

Cut 1cm thick slices and lay them flat on the baking parchment, with the cut edges upwards.

Press the middle together slightly, then flip one of the ends around forming a twist.

Spread out each ‘petal’ of pastry until they are evenly spaced.

Bake for 12-14 minutes, turning the baking sheet around after 7 minutes to ensure even colouring. Don’t be tempted to take the bows out too early – they need to be nicely caramelised.

Cool on a wire rack.

These can be served as they are, or alongside something creamy like fruit fool or syllabub, so the petals can be broken off and dipped into.